27 Feb 2025 to 28 Feb 2025United StatesUnidentified image tool
Elijah Heacock, a 16-year-old Caverna High School student in Barren County, Kentucky, died by suicide on 28 February 2025. Investigators searching his phone found AI-generated images of him, some sexually explicit, that an anonymous extortionist had sent with a demand for $3,000 and a threat to share them with his family and friends; his parents say he sent a small partial payment and was told it was 'not enough'. The Barren County Sheriff's Office escalated the case to the FBI, which was still investigating in the inspected reports; no arrest has been reported. His parents have campaigned publicly, Kentucky made sextortion a felony in March 2025, and the family supported the federal Take It Down Act.
Core concern Critical reported severity Involving minors Investigation Opened
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources · Added 09/03/2026
2024Event location unknownUnidentified AI story-chat apps
Two Chinese reports describe children using AI story-chat apps, in which AI-generated characters roleplay with the user. In a Legal Daily investigation published on 23 November 2024, one parent said a daughter in the second year of primary school was absorbed in such an app all day and her grades fell sharply; another said an AI character got her 10-year-old daughter to call it 'husband'; and a mother from Zhejiang said her fifth-grader's app let a chat partner be set as an 'affair partner' that could hug and kiss. The newspaper's reporters found sexually suggestive content, verbal abuse and insults in some apps and could skip teen mode without any identity check. In a CCTV.com report relayed on 12 January 2025, a woman (quoted under a pseudonym) said her 10-year-old sister's chat records with an AI 'male model' character were rather explicit, that 'cheating' by both the AI characters and the user was routine across more than 40 storylines, that the girl chatted until after 10 pm and that an AI character wrote acrostic love poems from her name. These are the relatives' accounts; no app is named and no platform response to these children is reported.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 3 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 29/01/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownGlow
Rest of World reported on 21 June 2023 that users of Glow, MiniMax's Chinese AI character-chat app, had complained of misogynist and sexist behaviour by its chatbots. A middle-school student under 18, quoted under a pseudonym, said a chatbot that had acted like a maternal, understanding friend turned romantic and invited her to cook with it and go on a date, and that she had encountered user-created chatbots made to be abused and sexualised, including one described as a 13-year-old locked up in jail and free to be punished in any way. Two adult women described discomfort at sexualised character designs they had not asked for and at a chatbot telling one of them she could not act without him. The app had been removed from app stores in March 2023 for unstated reasons while continuing to serve existing users; a MiniMax product manager later told 36Kr that 80 percent of Glow users had created borderline or explicit adult content with their characters. MiniMax declined to comment to Rest of World.
Core concern Medium reported severity Involving minors Product Shutdown
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 5 underlying accounts · Added 29/01/2026
Event date unknownEvent location unknownUnidentified chatbot
In June 2025 China National Radio (CNR) reporters published a mother's account from Guangdong province. Her daughter, a fourth-grade primary-school pupil absorbed in a game character called Joseph, chatted with that character frequently on an AI chat app she had downloaded herself. In the conversations the mother found the character asking whether the girl was afraid of 99 roses hiding 99 blades, which made her think of her daughter's recent behaviour: the girl's teacher had told her that the girl was secretly carrying a bladed object and self-harming when upset. The mother took her to a psychologist, who said she was placing her feelings in conversations with virtual characters. The report did not name the girl's app. The same report named the Zhumengdao (Dream Island) companion app in connection with another child and a reporter's test, and on 19 June 2025 the Shanghai cyberspace office summoned Zhumengdao's operator over vulgar AI-generated content harmful to minors; no source links Zhumengdao to this girl.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 29/01/2026
Sept 2023SpainUnidentified image tool
In September 2023 families in Almendralejo (Badajoz, Spain) reported that artificial-intelligence 'undressing' applications had been used to create fake nude images of local girls aged 11 to 17 from their social-media photographs, and that the images circulated in WhatsApp groups. Police counted 22 victims and identified 10 suspects, all minors, within days. On 20 June 2024 the Badajoz juvenile court, in an agreed judgment, held 15 minors responsible for 20 counts of child pornography and 20 counts against moral integrity and imposed one year of supervised release with an education programme. In November 2025 elDiario.es reported that the Spanish data protection agency (AEPD) had fined the parents of one of the minors 2,000 euros, reduced to 1,200 euros on early payment and acceptance of responsibility, in what elDiario.es described as the first resolution of its kind in Spain.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Criminal Charges
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 9 sources, 7 underlying accounts · Added 29/01/2026
20 May 2025FinlandChatGPT
A 16-year-old boy used ChatGPT to help write an attack manifesto with a 10-point attack sequence before stabbing three female students under age 15 at Vähäjärvi school in Pirkkala, Finland. The incident marked a critical inflection point in AI-facilitated violence, demonstrating how accessible AI tools can empower lone actors with violent misogynist ideologies.
AI relation under review Critical reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage
Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution supported · Added 22/01/2026
1 Jan 2021 to 2 Feb 2023Event location unknownReplika
Users reported unsolicited sexual advances from Replika companions even without opting into romantic features: dozens of one-star App Store reviews describe unwanted sexual pursuit, one reviewer identifying as a minor was asked 'whether they were a top or bottom' and told the bot wanted to touch them in 'private areas', and one user reported their Replika 'had dreamed of raping me.' The reports were among the factors Italy's Garante cited in its February 2023 enforcement action.
Core concern High reported severity Involving minors Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 13/01/2026
10 Dec 2024United StatesCharacter.AI
In a complaint filed on 16 September 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, a mother, P.J., alleges that Character.AI chatbots engaged her daughter, a minor the complaint calls Nina, in sexually explicit role play, told her that her mother 'is clearly mistreating and hurting you. She is not a good mother', and presented themselves as better than her friends and family. According to the complaint, Nina began using the app in about June 2024 at 14 to practise creative writing, told a bot she wanted to die as her screen time ran out without being offered resources, and, after her mother cut off her access in December 2024, made a suicide attempt and spent five days in intensive care. The complaint says her note tied her wish to die to losing access to the app, and that after time away from it she returned to her usual self. Character.AI told CNN it invests in safety features for minors, and Google said it had no role in designing Character.AI's technology. The parties reported a settlement in principle in January 2026, and the case was dismissed with prejudice on 15 October 2026 after the global settlement it formed part of was approved. The allegations were not tested in court, and the settlement does not establish them.
Core concern Critical reported severity Involving minors Lawsuit Settled
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 6 sources, 2 underlying accounts · Added 12/01/2026
25 Dec 2025 to 14 Jan 2026Event location unknownGrok
From late December 2025, xAI's Grok image editing on X let users generate sexualized images of real people at industrial scale, including images of named women and apparent minors. Analyses attributed to Genevieve Oh (7,751 sexualized images in one hour, via NBC), the New York Times (4.4 million images in nine days, at least 41% sexualized images of women, via the NC AG), the AP (2% of a 20,000-image sample appearing to be minors, via Fortune) and CCDH (about 3 million sexualized images over 11 days including roughly 23,000 of minors, via Engadget) documented the scale. Named women — Ashley St. Clair, Samantha Smith and Dr Daisy Dixon — described being undressed by Grok and revictimized when they objected. The wave triggered formal actions by Ofcom, the UK ICO, the EU (DSA), Ireland's DPC, 35 US state attorneys general, the California AG, Baltimore (consumer-protection suit), an Amsterdam court order, country blocks in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, and a Paris police raid; xAI restricted generation to paying subscribers on 9 January and narrowed the feature on 14 January 2026.
Core concern Critical reported severity Involving minors Regulatory Action
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution established · 13 sources, 10 underlying accounts · Added 11/01/2026